Gibson Bateman: Prolific Author on Sri Lanka Human Rights Issues

On and off you find these prolific apparently objective unbiased authors who write "scholarly" articles on controversial subjects such as Sri Lanka's Economy and Human Rights.

Arjuna Sivanathan was one such predicting the dire straits and collapse of the Sri Lankan economy. His pronouncements were given quite a good hearing based on his PhD and Masters in economics from the University of Glasgow and experience Trading Corporate and Sovereign bonds and credit derivatives.  Then it turned out Arjuna no longer worked in Investment Banking and was also a Executive member British Tamil Conservatives and had called for "Sri Lanka must be subject to a regime of punitive economic sanctions".  Suddenly his unbiased "scholarly" predictions were in question.

New on the scene is Gibson Bateman who focuses on Sri Lankan Human Rights issues with many "scholarly" articles in the International Policy Digest,  Foreign Policy Journal and GroundViews (Clicking on the links will list the articles. Foreign Policy Journal calls them "stories")

Gibson Bateman's has written 15 articles over a period of 14 months (Oct 2011 to Dec 2012) makes one starts to wonder what motivates the man to this prolific authorship.

So, lets start with what we know.  According to Gibson Bateman's LinkedIn profile he is a former Peace Corps volunteer (2001-2003) and a Independent Management Consulting Professional.  The blurb heading his articles is that

Gibson Bateman is an International Consultant based in New York City. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Bateman has worked for leading NGOs in Latin America, Africa and South Asia.

 All well and good and impressive. However this does not answer the question what motivates Gibson Bateman to write 15 articles over a 14 month period and also visit Sri Lanka on a Tourist Visa from April 2012 to Jan 2013 (see these articles; Immigration Anxiety and Dengue Fever).  To put it more crudely where is the money.

The International Policy Digest and Foreign Policy Journal are online Journals that accept unsolicited submissions, are not peer reviewed and no compensation provided.  So, these two publications are not really Main Stream Media (MSM) where you get paid for your journalistic efforts. Neither are they peer reviewed Journal.  Truth be told International Policy Digest and Foreign Policy Journal are no different from GroundViews (but fancier names and US based) or a blog with multiple authors (but fancier website).

Now we know that Gibson Bateman is very busy writing for a blog that calls itself a journal and provides no compensation.  Real peer reviewed journal articles requires you to provide funding sources.  International Policy Digest and Foreign Policy Journal are no better than glorified blog and requires no such disclosure.

So how does Gibson Bateman fund his writing and travel to Sri Lanka. I doubt Gibson is going to give us full or for that matter partial disclosure. Given the tenor of Gibson Bateman's articles I am sure your suspicions are no different from mine.

I guess its a case of "Reader Beware" and "Beware of False Prophets".